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Hurricane Charley
Remember George Castanza's ambition of pretending to be an architect. Well, my ambition is to pretend to be a meteorologist. Here's a little essay on Hurricane Charley:Last week on August 13th, Hurricane Charley hit Florida. I've tracked hurricanes for several years. There were several interesting things about Charley:
Tracking Hurricane Charley made for an exciting August 13th. My family around Orlando had no significant damage to their homes, just a few fallen trees and about a day's worth of power outage. Even most manufactured homes weathered the storm well.
- Bad Timing for Southwest and Central Florida - Usually, hurricanes miss Florida. If they come from the Atlantic, the Bermuda High and the Gulf Stream will take the hurricane north (either towards the Carolinas or east away from land). If hurricanes make it to the Gulf of Mexico, they also go north and hit the Florida panhandle or other northern parts of the Gulf of Mexico. Charley timed its entrance into the gulf with a rare August cold front. This front pulled Charley across Florida (from just north of Fort Myers through Orlando and Daytona).
- Cuba didn't weaken it any - When hurricanes cross over land, they usually weaken and will take days over water before they strengthen. Charley stayed together as it passed over Cuba's most narrow region. I was amazed as I tracked Charley on Friday August 13th. Early in the morning it started out with 110mph winds. By noon it had reached 125mph. Then by 2:00pm, it had reached 145mph winds.
- The cold front didn't weaken it any - Often if a cold front starts affecting a hurricane's course, it will weaken it. That didn't happen in this case.
- Central Region survived reasonably well - As would be expected, Charley weakened as it moved over Florida. However, the Orlando area did record gusts of over 100mph. There was a lot of minor damage with trees down and power outages. However, the vast majority of homes and buildings didn't have substantial damage. In fact, Disney World attractions re-opened the next day. The front that was pulling the hurricane did help it move quickly over Florida averaging between 20 and 30mph. This meant there would be less time that strong winds would last and less rain.
- 90% of the major hurricane damage is near its eye and near the coast - Hurricanes might seem big, but most of the severe wind is within 10 or 20 miles from the eye. The Southwest Florida towns like Punta Gorda had a lot of wind damage. However, there was no word of any significant damages 70 miles north in Sarasota. Also, even though the eye traveled across Orlando, there wasn't near the damage as was seen at Punta Gorda. 120 miles of land weakened the hurricane substantially.
Central Florida was hit much harded in February 1998 by a line of tornados which were part of a cold front. Those tornados had winds of over 200mph. The tornados killed around 35 people in the Orlando area (more than Charley killed in all of Florida). The houses that were hit by those tornados were destroyed. The difference is that those tornados just hit a very small random areas. My dad lived just about 5 miles from one tornado had hit. That torndao destroyed dozens of homes and killed 11 people. At my dad's house, there was no damage. These tornados were F3's or F4's which are very rare for Florida.
: 12:10 PM, October 29, 2005
